Today we received this letter of solidarity from the public library of the spanish occupation of Puerta del Sol Square in Madrid. These are the folks that started the occupation model that the NYC General Assembly and #OccupyWallStreet are based on

Cheers from the public library of the Spanish revolution occupation at Madrid!

We are the Acampada Sol Library, The library that was formed during the occupation of the Puerta del Sol Square here in Madrid- Spain last May. We have been following OWS from the very first day and let´s say we are glad to see that you found the way out to organise you up almost in the same way we did while we were camping at the city hall square in Madrid at Puerta del Sol.

What we saw at the pics of OWS was quite impressive, but you couldn’t imagine how surprised we were when we realized that OWS has also a library. It may sound stupid but when we knew that, we celebrated it as the born of a new one in the family.

Why? well, it´s difficult to explain but during the nearly seven weeks we lived there hearing the rain fall over the piece of plastic that barely covered our books (not us) we had a lot of time to think about what we were going trough. The media described us as bums, the government as the most dangerous kind of terrorists (the pacifist’s kind) and we slept always waiting for the final police riot that would throw everything down. We had time for joy and also for despair. We never knew what we were doing, we only knew that it was right. People said it was useless to demand a U turn in local politics in a country with a globalized economy. We replied if so, that we expected to make our demands go global then, they said it was a childish dream and they laughed..

We only want to thank all of you to be there, because may be you don´t realize it, but you’re making our dream come true… Obviously to do the right thing, far from being a utopia or related to culture is a matter of common sense.

We should say that none of us decided to open up a library during our occupation, it appeared by itself. People who came to support us wanted us to have some of their books, they wanted us to read and to take care of them. We started out only with forty titles. People came up to rest from the everyday routines, trying to find a shelter in the written words under our blue tent, poets showed up to red them their works and free thinkers their essays. Authors showed up to dedicate us their recent publications, unknown writers from everywhere found inspiration on what they saw at the occupation and brought us their thoughts in paper asking us to publish it, and we did so. The manager of one mayor corporate library in town gave us book-carts and everything we needed. “Just don’t tell anyone” he asked. One donation come after another and in a few weeks we reached nearly four thousands titles at our outdoor library. A funny heritage to save considering that we were waiting to be bludgeoned and evicted from one minute to other.

Happily the police hadn´t the chance to destroy our library as some of their predecessors accomplished two thousand years ago in Alexandria. (They wouldn’t mind, I’m sure) This time the classics were moved to a safe place. As a strategy, the occupation ended up on June 12th. We found a new shelter for our creatures at a squatted social centre where we have our spot. and actually we are working to give people what government can not, a free of charge public library. We expect our opening within a month or so.

We love to hear from you to know how all of you guys are going and we hope you’ll find inspiration in our little story to realise that you are not alone in this.